Installing new HDD

Back in the days of Windows 3.1 and DOS, you could install Windows on 1 PC and move the drive to another PC.

Since then, it is a BAD idea to go beyond copying the Windows CD, or a basic "image", onto the drive before installing it into the targetPC.

If there are ANY hardware differences between the 2 PCs, Windows is VERY likely to freeze while booting.

For XP, this WILL not work at ALL!!! Even if the hardware is IDENTICAL! You WILL generate an activation event.

You can get away with doing this "most of the time" for Windows 95 and 98.

When moving a hard drive with W2K or XP installed to different hardware, Microsoft recommends the following procedure:

Back up the hard drive.
Move the drive to the new system.
Format the drive, and install Windows fresh.
Restore from your backup.

Was the drive a slave in the PC where you installed W2K onto the drive?
If so, the files you need are in the root folder of the boot drive on the other PC.

Even if you direct Windows to install on another hard drive, the initial BOOT files are ALWAYS installed onto the BOOT drive (C:).

If you are VERY lucky, all you need to do, is copy the W2K boot files from the PC where you installed W2K onto the drive.
They will be in the root of the active boot drive.
ntldr
ntdetect
boot.ini

The boot.ini file may need to be edited to specifically match the new PC.

Chas

Sounds like you installed W2K on the drive configured as a slave, or maybe secondary master. You probably need to edit your BOOT.INI file. You should have some lines like this...
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Change the numbers in your file to match those above as that is the correct settings for a single master drive.

If that doesn't work, it might be easier just to reinstall the OS again

It is my understanding that the NTLDR uses the BOOT.INI to detemine which O/s are available. Your NTLDR is probably on your other drive. Since yours seems to unavailable, im not sure editing BOOT.INI will help. This is what Mike Myers suggest to make a Win 2000 bootup/repair set of disks.

1. Go to \BOOTDISK folder on CD-Rom. Find MAKEBOOT.exe or MAKEBT32.exe.
2. On WIn 9x run makeboot; on Win 2000, run MAKEBT32.
3. Follow instructions to build 4 floppies.
4. Label them.

Boot of this set of disks, and it should go into repair mode. Hope this helps.

Ok guys, thanks for that. I tried those things, but now I've gone one step further(sideways)because they didn't work (but very good sugestions)
I had the new HDD in the new box and booted to CDROM and put in a WinXP Pro disc. I told it to setup on the only partition and do a quick format.
Then it went through copying the files but it stoped and came up with a STOP error. (IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL) So I restarted and went through the process again and it came up with another stop error - this time it did spell out what it was but just gave the usual 0xC0000005 data. Tried again - it stoped (in the file transfer stage) saying a file was corrupt or missing and canceled the setup. *^$^$@#
So I stuck another HDD in that had Win98 running on it - to see if I could start the PC. No luck. It kept saying problems with different files every time I tried.

So

My thoughts are that I've got a problem with the hardware. It's got a new Ram Stick, New CPU, New Graphics card, new hdd and a secondhand motherbaord.
Details are...
Gigabyte KT400 GA-7VAX1394 M/B
512MB stick PC2700 DDR Ram - "Spectek"
Nvidia Ti4200 GeForce 128mb DDR 8X AGP Card
WD 80GB HDD
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ CPU

Anybody got any ideas?

Thanks
Mark

Point value changed by question poster.

You have a bad RAM.
You described a typical symptom, installation failure because of missing or corrupt files.

Replace the DDR and install Windows again from scratch.

Are you replacing your current harddrive with a new one? If so you can use PowerQuest's Drive Image program. This will copy the image from one drive to the other.

Or are you just adding a new drive?
If so all you need is to format it.
But youneed to check the jumpers on both drives.
One needs to set for master and the other to slave, if they are on the same ribben.
If the new drive is on the second ribben you still need to check the jumpers for the drives (CD, etc) which one is set tomaster and slave.
Note you can also use cable select setting, but you still should have one of the drives set to master.

good luck

I've got exactly the same MSI card. What PSU have you got? You will need at LEAST A 400W PSU to run that AGP card. AT LEAST. I was having the same problems, my machine would get into Windows, but freeze. Upon removing the ATX power supply from the board, it was scorched on the 3.3V pin. Change your PSU to a 450W to be safe. Happy computing mate.

In a similar situation that I experience, I had to flash the BIOS, and find an updated IDE controller driver for the motherboard of the target PC. Not as elaborate as the other suggestions, but at least worth a try.

This question was closed by the author